I don’t travel very often for work, but it just so happened that I was asked to accompany a small group of folks to conduct site visits at other universities around the country.

Even better: we got to take a private plane!

What’s cool about private planes (besides the whole, wouldn’t-it-be-awesome-to-have-one-of-your-own aspect) is that the cockpit is open, so you can watch the pilot fiddle with knobs and dials and see all the lights and displays. I was like a kid on a field trip; it was so neat!

After the first leg of the trip, I told the pilot that I enjoyed watching him fly the aircraft, and he said that on the next leg, I could sit up there in the co-pilot seat!

Here’s the view from my lap! What an exquisite experience! I even got to wear a headset and listen to the air traffic controllers and other pilots give instructions and report back and forth.

The pilot joked about letting me land the plane, and I told him that I should probably not admit how many times I crashed Flight Simulator (the old-school PC version). He laughed and said that he’d handle the landing.